I am currently at a course with forecasters from around Africa. We have been exploring how people use data (and particularly satellite data) in their forecasting. During one session I asked people what process or route they follow when they forecast.
The response looked like:
>Understand what the client needs / what they are sensitive to
--> apply a local understanding of the meteorology
----> look at the current data (observations and NWP ) and develop a story about the current weather
------> look at the forecast NWP and generate a forecast
On the top of the image you may be able to see words that look like analysis and forecasting, above the word current weather story.
At the start of the discussion we made a difference between analysis and forecasting. As the conversation continued the participants made much less of a distinction. The story being dynamic representing what the atmosphere is doing now, how it got that way and where it might be going.
This concept of story has been very useful during the course, some of our stories are familiar and have familiar names (monsoon, mascarine high, ITCZ/ITD) and are also known as conceptual models. The stories have helped participants start to identify what to look for in different sources of data (in particular satellite data).
I notice how much enagement is generated by the particpants and instructors when people talk using "weather as story" over, for example, talking about what can be seen with a particular channel from Meteosat/MSG.
